


Today’s Failure, Tomorrow’s a New Chance

by Lunarium



Series: SSSS: Saga of the Mages (aka Mageverse) [7]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 15:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10130132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarium/pseuds/Lunarium
Summary: It was the longest night for the crew as fear, guilt, and pain ticked by with the seconds. Set before Chapters 13 and 14, the tale follows four crew members’ reactions of the fateful troll attack.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for H/C Bingo's Amnesty Challenge. Postage Stamp, where you create a fanwork based on four prompts. Mine were: panic attacks, blood loss, purgatory, and survivor's guilt. You will find those themes in that same order here.

They stood side by side and watched the fire flicker in triumphant silence, but the grin on Sigrun’s face abated as another sort of silence followed behind. An absence of presence, she peered behind her to note Mikkel was gone. Something heavy seemed to linger just above the tank. The door stood wide open, the inside pitch black, and she found herself tugging on Emil’s sleeve as she darted towards the tank. 

In place of silence, pulsing beating of her heart reached her ears, heavy, thick, dread-filled. Silence lingered buzzing in the tank, shattered by the pounding of her boots clambering towards the bunks. Her vision nearly gave out from the sudden dread—the sudden realization, the sight of a massive hole on the floor, the dead troll bleeding—

Mikkel was leaning over Tuuri, examining in silence, and when he stepped back, Sigrun got a good look at her. Amidst all the frantic buzzing in her mind, she could confirm that Tuuri was alive and whole, even if something was amiss, she was still alive. 

She thought she saw blood—there was once blood covering his face as Sigrun ran screaming his name, but she had reached her comrade and charge too late, and the face of her first failure as captain haunted her moments of rest for months. 

“Blood splattered on ya?” Even her attempt at light humor carried the burden of impending grief. _Not Tuuri not Tuuri not Tuuri not Tuuri not Tuuri not—_

The large grey eyes on her grew misty and forlorn, and it was too long a moment before Tuuri finally shook her head. 

Her brain somehow registered—smell of gunpowder still in the air—an image of the happenings inside the room minutes before as she fought obliviously outside. 

“Lalli shot your shoulder? Want me to punch him for you in cold revenge?” No humor clung to her words, and she was sure none shone in her eyes despite the smile she displayed for her lover—the smile was once a perfect decoy as she held a previous lover in her arms, putting on a show before delivering the final blow herself as not to let her lover suffer any longer. 

Tuuri’s eyes glimmered with tears about to teem and trickle down a pale face. Sigrun’s peripheral vision denied the bullet hole a safe distance away from both Tuuri and Reynir, who was mercifully untouched. 

“It wasn’t Lalli who shot me,” Tuuri finally managed. “It’s not the troll’s blood. It’s my blood. I…I was bitten.” 

The hole on the floor seemed to grow larger, the splinters of wood cracking wide open to claim Sigrun, the sharp edges ready to pierce the fast-pounding heart about to erupt from her chest. Keeping her breathing steady, Sigrun got to her knees and clasped Tuuri’s now wet cheeks in her shaking palms. 

“You have to be brave,” she said. Were the words for Tuuri or herself? “We’ll figure something out. Got that? We’ve faced worse.” 

_Nothing’s worse than this_ , Sigrun thought as she glimpsed the fear in her beloved’s eyes. The next words felt like a sword hurling through her chest as her injured arm gave a sudden flash of pain. _You failed her. Game over._

*

The bite was rather small compared to the jaws of the troll—it must have grazed over her skin in the mad frenzy it was doing in the bunks—but it still made her bleed profusely. It seeped through her thick sweater and the overcoat by the time her cousin reached them. Her instinct was to clamp her hand over the wound to stop the bleeding, but Mikkel had wanted her to bleed it out in hopes of ridding any poison. Once he was satisfied, he applied the antiseptics and bandaged her up. He kept his face professional.

But it would too late. She had made contact with one of the trolls. Despite a mask on, her bare skin had made contact. She was infected, and death imminent. Mikkel’s large hands were gentle and careful, reminding her of her father holding her when she was had gotten sick as a small child. She dared not to ask for a hug, despite how much she needed one (weak thing.) 

The look on Lalli’s face will forever haunt her. A killer one moment, the next, suddenly eight years old again and very much the terrified cousin she comforted after the tragedy in Saimaa. 

The dark room felt like it was growing thicker by the moment, about to collapse over her. Reynir could scarcely move, paralyzed as he was. His paralysis is perhaps what saved him in the long run. Her natural instinct to flinch out of danger ended up getting her bit. 

Her fault. Her failure. 

Not her fault, Sigrun insisted. 

Tuuri hoped the nodding would make those words stick into her brain. She hid the tears.

*

A godawful feeling was what had pulled Lalli into the tank. Sensing the danger looming over the lives of those inside over two who he loved. He had only recently come to love them. One was family but they were never really close until they came on this expedition. The other was a man he had fallen for the moment he saw him in his dreams, and hated him the moment he saw him in the waking world, and fell for him all over again.

The threat of their lives grew until is tasted like a burning acid in his throat as he sped with his rifle, kicked the door open, and fired at the troll. It shot straight through the skull, and the fiend fell to the ground. Now inside, Lalli saw. 

He was too late. 

The rest of the next hour happened in a blur. All thoughts of the times he could have spent with Tuuri haunted him like sharp talons digging into his shoulders, reminding him of the minutes now ticking before her inevitable end. 

Words spoken around him were none in the language he understood, and what tiny snippets he did understand of Swedish or Icelandic only made the dread worse. At last punishment was rolling out for never trying hard enough to learn the others’ languages, for never spending more time with Tuuri when she clearly wished to. What would be the result of it all in the end? Will he get Tuuri back? Or would he return to Finland after having to dig a grave for her, and could he leave her here among all the beasts and ghosts and trolls who taunted and terrorized them? Tuuri deserves better. 

His fault. His failure. 

Lalli’s eyes strayed to his lover. Reynir seldom moved in all this time, but by now Lalli could see the first drops of tears making their way down his cheeks. A reaction finally coming from his fool. Lalli was too numb and grieved to be angry at him for reacting like this. It wasn’t his fault for feeling too trapped to move. Lalli knew the feeling all too well himself. 

Sigrun ushered Tuuri out of the room. Lalli didn’t—couldn’t—move when Mikkel and Emil dragged the fiend out of the tank. Mikkel returned with some wood and hastily set up a wall. Lalli understood; the sooner they quarantined the other non-immune, the better. He would need to go over it in the morning, but the noise of the hammer could draw back the trolls. 

He first pointed to himself, then to the floor, making his message understood to Mikkel. Sigrun would undoubtedly want to remain with Tuuri. Lalli will stay with Reynir. 

There was something his lover did earlier that evening when they had first set up their stand, and Lalli needed Reynir to do that magic again. While Mikkel disinfected the area, Lalli grabbed hold of Reynir’s cheeks in his hands and pressed their foreheads together. 

_Talk to me. Please talk to me._

To his relief, Reynir understood and he felt the confinement of the tank drop away. Soon he was standing in Reynir’s Haven, somber yet tranquil and safe. 

“Are you hurt?” Lalli said. “Tuuri was bleeding, but the thing could have gotten you too.” 

“I’m fine,” Reynir said, but Lalli was already pulling back Reynir’s coat. He examined as much of him as he could, not backing out—(“ _You were in shock, you could have been bitten but didn’t know!_ ”) 

The circular buttons around Reynir’s collar blurred in Lalli’s eyes but he pushed back the tears and steadied his hands. He squeezed Reynir’s arms in anger with a hint of blame— _you’re a mage! Why couldn’t you do anything?_

But he would not dare himself to cry. 

Reynir cried enough for both of them instead.

*

He was so stupid. Reynir wanted to kick himself. He never meant for his entire body to freeze the way it had the moment the troll burst through the floorboard. It was not the first of the fiends in the Silent World he had faced against; he was somehow able to form a protective rune the first time. But this one had taken them by surprise. His mind had gone blank, and—and before he knew it, Tuuri was infected.

“I’m sorry,” Reynir managed in Lalli’s arms. “It should be me dying.” 

“Don’t say that!” Lalli snapped, his voice cold as ice. He pulled from their embrace to peer into Reynir’s eyes. “We’ll…figure something out. I’m glad you’re safe, at least.” 

“It’s my fault. I failed her. I’m so stupid.” 

“You froze. You’re not used to being in battle.” 

“I sent a protective rune that day when the ghosts attacked the tank,” Reynir said. Lalli’s head cocked to one side. “That was when you were without your Luonto.” 

“I remember the attack,” Lalli said slowly. “I thought you only drew them, like that paper you gave me. Or on the field. The exploding runes.” 

“I was trying to draw what I had seen!” Reynir said. “I’ve also seen it on my family’s farm, but I don’t know how well I got them to work. I couldn’t have done a good job because they followed us—they’re not supposed to explode!” 

Lalli shrugged. “Took out a few trolls out there.” 

“But Lalli…the moment I saw the ghosts, something inside me clicked. I was so scared I somehow did magic right there. I don’t know why I couldn’t do it when I saw the troll. I was so terrified, but my magic should have been activated! A survival instinct! I failed Tuuri. I failed my friend!” 

Lalli said nothing for a while. At long last he simply gave Reynir a kiss on his lips. 

“Take us back,” he said, “and get to bed. It’s going to be a long night.” 

“Are you angry with me?” Reynir asked. He wouldn’t blame Lalli if he were. Reynir was angry at himself for failing a friend. He had not known her for that long, but she was kind and cheerful and seemed a good soul all around, and that she was Lalli’s cousin and the sister of a mage he had interacted with as well in the dreamworld made him feel he was part of a family. Nothing was as alienating from a family as _this_. Even with a kiss from Lalli and the words meant to comfort him, Reynir had to know. Everything, _everything_ , was his fault. 

It took Lalli a painfully long time to answer him. “Please, take us back to the tank, Reynir. You can’t rest here while you’re standing up over there.”

*

Sigrun collected Tuuri into her arms. Mikkel had barricaded the bunks so that there was even less space on either side, but they would make do. The two men gathered on the floor as best they could. Sigrun took up next to Tuuri. Her feet up hit up against the makeshift wall, but it was fine. This was their reality now.

In the dark she cradled Tuuri, soothed her even as her own heart continued to palpitate. 

“What will Onni say after I tell him?” Tuuri whispered fearfully to Sigrun. “He never wanted me to leave Finland. I wanted to prove him wrong, and…I just wanted to see the rest of the world…” 

“You have a right not to tell him,” Sigrun said. “It’s your health and you can share it with anyone or keep it from anyone. I can spin him the best heroic deeds of your final battle if you wish.” 

Tuuri’s tiny smile cracked her tear-stricken face—It was the same with the youngest viking to ever die on Sigrun’s watch—

Visions of failures past flashed before her, the blood, the tears, the infection growing, eyes glazed over as disease took over reason—

Sigrun heaved a heavy sigh and closed her eyes. 

_Let tomorrow come_ , she thought in half-prayer. _Today we lost a battle, but tomorrow we can start again._

*

Lalli lay under Reynir’s bed, but he could scarcely sleep. Reynir’s words kept replaying in his mind. His eyes traveled up, wondering if Reynir was sleeping. Reached his hand up and touched the bottom of the bunk, not knowing that in that moment Reynir lay awake with his hand over the exact spot on other side of the bed.

After a few moments he heard Reynir speak softly and gently, with Lalli’s name attached. Perhaps asking if he was still awake. He froze for a moment, and then—

Reynir gasped as Lalli emerged from under his bed and slipped right next to him. 

“Lalli! This is the first time I’ve ever seen you sleep on _top_ of a bed!” Reynir said, but he knew Lalli couldn’t understand him. He was met with a kiss and a tight embrace. Those were words enough. Tonight Lalli wanted them to be close, and Reynir gladly obliged. 

As they slipped into sleep, Reynir offered his Haven again for Lalli, and he took it. He wasn’t in the mood to talk again, but Reynir gave him a place under a tranquil moonlit sky and a warm meadow where they could sleep out in the wide open without fear of any troll or ghost. 

Reynir slept throughout the night, but Lalli occasionally awoke, his mind alit with how to keep the other trolls at bay. Tonight had seen a failure, but tomorrow would offer them another chance.


End file.
